Monday, September 19, 2011

I Made This: Blueberry Basil Preserves

I have a habit of cooking really late at night. It's pretty ridiculous. An old roommate of mine loves to tell the story of finding me in the kitchen peeling potatoes at 3 o'clock in the morning. I figure that if I can't sleep I might as well be productive. But not the balance my checkbook or fold laundry kind of productive, but the make a huge mess in the kitchen kind of productive.

Last night at 11:07pm I decided to make Blueberry Basil Preserves. It wasn’t entirely an out of the blue thought; a borrowed canner from a friend had been sitting on the breakfast table for over a week, (I have pretty wild and crazy friends that own canners and stuff) and I had 3 pounds of blueberries waiting patiently in the fridge. I think somewhere in the maze of my mind I rationalized that making jam would be a strategic move to stop Monday morning from coming so quickly. (Spoiler alert: Monday morning still came quickly).

I have never made jam, jellies or preservers before. I haven’t canned anything before. I even had to google how to use the canner, which to me just looked like a huge pot. I would say that I like a challenge, but in reality, it wasn’t that complicated; chop, stir, boil, stir some more and a nice hot bath, for the jars of preserves, not yourself, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

One of the benefits of cooking is the relative immediate satisfaction. To say, Hey I made this! And brag about it, hypothetically, on a blog. Unless it turns out crummy, then you just have to cover it with ice cream or bury it in the trash and hope no one asks. But with these preserves, I had to wait 12-24 hours for them to cool. Oh, new recipe anticipation! I dreamt about my little blueberry jars last night, when I finally got to bed. Wait, does that clock say 2:17 AM. Yikes. In addition to the canning and clean up I also felt the needed to watch a music documentary which led to a guest appearance by Joe Strummer in my dreams. I was giving him a jar or jam. Awkward since he died in 2002 and awesome because I was giving Joe Strummer a jar of jam. I thought jam about all day at work. What if the jars didn’t seal? (They did!) What was I going to taste test them with? (Biscuits!) Why do people hit reply all, when it is clearly not a reply all situation? (mystery of the universe!)

Biscuits + Blueberry Basil Preserves + Brie = one genius of a dinner. The preserves actually turned out really good; you can taste the fresh from the garden basil but it isn't too strong and balances out the blueberry beautifully.